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A Brazilian Autumn?

Miguel Borba de Sa Jacobin
The movement is battlefield, highlighting all the contradictions of Brazilian society.

Convicting the Innocent: Where Criminal Prosecutions Go Wrong

Marvin Zalman Proving Innocence
The cumulative effect of Convicting the Innocent is stunning. Almost all of the 250 DNA exonerations occurred in murder or rape cases. Murder and rape amounts to less than 1% of all felony convictions. The errors typically flowed not from malicious motives but from the normal cognitive biases that lead detectives and prosecutors to be convinced that they have the right person. The result must be thousands of erroneous guilty pleas and trial convictions each year.

The Great Gandolfini

Tom Carson The American Prospect
James Gandolfini's genius was his knack for humanizing but not sentimentalizing his tough guy characters.

Friday Nite Videos -- June 21, 2013

Portside
Why the World Cup should not be Brazil's priority. Flashmob Carmina Burana. John Oliver, immigration and pro wrestling. Gandolfini's other work: Wartorn. Movie: How to Make Money Selling Drugs. Dance-off at the office.

New Visions from the New Left

David Moberg In These Times
Gar Alperovitz and Staughton Lynd have blueprints for an `America beyond capitalism.' Both imagine a new America that would evolve through painstaking process in which the virtues of democratic socialism would be prefigured. They offer a component of the answer to what a new New Left must do. Democracy and egalitarianism animates both visions, but neither fully imagines how the Left might gain and use state power or how to change the national or global economic rules.

Tidbits - June 20, 2013

Portside
Bertolt Brecht on whistle-blowers, those who oppose their own governments immoral activities; Reader Comments on NSA Spying; Civil Liberties Suit; Edward Snowden; Angela Davis; Undercounting the Poor; Syria; The Rosenberg Case ; Paleo Diet; Announcements - Meeropol, granddaughter of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg; Manifesto and Petition in Support of the Monument to the International Brigades in Madrid - Help by signing.

Camouflaging the Vietnam War: How Textbooks Continue to Keep the Pentagon Papers a Secret

Bill Bigelow Zinn Education Project
The Pentagon Papers that Ellsberg exposed were not military secrets. They were historical secrets - a history of U.S. intervention and deceit that Ellsberg believed, if widely known, would undermine the U.S. pretexts in defense of the war's prosecution. Like today's whistle-blowers Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden, Daniel Ellsberg knew the consequences for his act of defiance. He was indicted on 11 counts of theft and violation of the Espionage Act.

North Carolina Protestors Targeted

Sue Sturgis, Jedediah Purdy
The Civitas Institute is publicizing the names, residence, political registration, employers, and other details of those arrested at the ongoing NAACP-organized protests at the legislature. The project calls to mind how Southern Dixiecrats and opponents of civil rights once published the names of NAACP supporters in newspapers to encourage retaliation against them.